Chris, I am going to call you out on some of the claims you make when it comes to the Judeo Christian God. You are relying heavily on the internet version, outdated scholarship, critical scholarship, etc. I am not going to go into a deep dive, I honestly don't have the bandwidth to get into an extended discussion due to a few looming grant proposal deadlines, but a lot of newer scholarship will challenge some of your assumptions. Monotheism is a bad term, but the ancient Hebrews did believe in different gods (Elohim), plural. They just didn't think that they were anything like Yahweh, the creator. The correct term would be monolatry or henotheism. It is funny, how some critical scholars come up with all this hogwash about ancient Judaism, and also by extension Christianity, and clearly haven't actually read the text. Both, the Old and New Testament clearly talk about other gods (=divine beings), which has nothing to do with the abilities we ascribe to God the Father (=unique, creator, etc). The so-called development as Yahweh from El is also not very well argued. I highly recommend reading "Unseen Realm" from Dr. Michael Heiser, read or listen to the Whole Counsel of God blog/podcast by Father Stephen de Young. Both of these have PhDs in their respective fields of ancient near east/biblical studies and make very good counter arguments that are backed up by very respected scholarship. Also read "Lord of Spirits" by Father Andrew Damick, and listen to the associated podcast from episode 1. You will be amazed by the richness of discussion, and enchantment that comes from it. I have now read several of your posts, and I find these broad misconceptions you have very frustrating. This is though not meant as an attack, just as a friendly, please read some other sources type of post.
Ok, thanks. Admittedly, I am no expert on Christianity, I understand my limitations in this field, but sometimes the topic is unavoidable, when discussing religious or spiritual matters. I'm much more comfortable in discussing Hinduism, but most of my readers probably wouldn't be interested. Still, I am going to post further on the divine feminine and its Hindu aspects, as that greatly interests me.
My college boyfriend went to Columbia (I was at Rutgers) and took a course on Buddhism with Uma Thurman's dad-- Prof. Thurman who was one of the first westerners to either become a Buddhist monk or become very close to being one. He had a debate about religion with Richard Dawkins at Columbia and we went to see it. At the time I wasn't religious but was searching and I remember thinking Prof. Thurman made generally good points about the benefits of religion and that Dawkins was relying on cliches and the arguments of a sullen teenager who thinks he's smarter than his parents. What was amazing to me was how much this upper westside crowd booed Thurman--a Buddhist, and not even a Tibetan and theistic Buddhist--because he defended religion on the whole. They cheered like crazy for Dawkins and his pouty, arrogant arguments. I came away realizing that atheists (generally) were angry or bitter or both. And that what classified their whole scene was one big sneer.
Atheists are basically trolls, at least online. It's really quite comical to witness how much delight they take in supposedly "owning" theists. As you say, really childish overall. My biggest problem is not a lack of belief in God, that I can see as a personal choice, obviously if you don't believe, you don't, nobody can force you to. My issue is with the wilful ignorance of materialists, they simply ignore so much of what is out there. Also, eyewitness accounts are evidence, you can't just dismiss them out of hand, because they don't fit your philosophical world view. If many people say they saw the same thing, it is considered evidence in a court of law.
I'd actually like to see your take on the whole 'incel' issue. I'm convinced that it has to do with a combination of the hypersexuality of modern life and the decrease in spirituality.
Thanks, interesting take, certainly far more serious intellectually, than anything I have come across so far.
I did consider writing about incelism, but it's such a minefield and would probably alienate at least half of my readers. It is a problem with no obvious solution and is likely to get much worse from here on. From a biological perspective, we are regressing to the animal kingdom norm of a very small number of alpha males (and even that term is disputed and incendiary, hence the problem of writing about this issue) monopolising the vast majority of women, who share access to the men they actually like and ignore the ones they don't. Absent some sort of social structure to enforce monogamy (for instance, through religion, or laws), humans apparently regress and default to all sorts of other "-gamies" (especially poly and hyper) and this leads to everyone being lonely and unhappy with a collapsing birth rate and eventually societal collapse.
Thought you'd like it. I recommend Feser's The Last Superstition where he's quite devastating in his attacks on the new atheist movement.
The reason I thought it might be relevant for you to write about incels is that the spiritual angle seems to be ignored in popular discussions of them. From what I've seen of these guys, they're extremely secular in their outlook and don't seem to have any kind of transcendent spirituality. I recall a pickup artist guy once who said crudely that the purpose of our lives was to 'eat and fuck' and we work jobs and make money so we can 'eat and fuck'. I do think a lot of incels have something like this mindset.
Obviously incel stands for 'involuntarily celibate', and if you pointed out the existence of voluntary celibates such as Catholic (and Buddhist) priests monks and nuns, I suspect they'd be flabbergasted that anyone would deliberately choose this, which I'd say is a sign of the hypersexualization of our time.
I'd probably quote the Bhagavad Gita to illustrate the problems with this approach, but whatever I would quote from there would be seen as incredibly sexist by today's standards. That is why, in my mind, the problem is unsolvable, or at least the steps that society would need to take to solve them, are unthinkable today, therefore it serves little purpose to talk about it.
Hindu scripture predicted our current age, which they call the Kali Yuga, with pretty amazing accuracy. It is even more amazing that they foresaw our current age thousands of years ago. Specifically, the scriptures talk about the deterioration, corruption and eventual disappearance of religion, as a consequence of which morality will also disappear, especially in terms of sexual inhibitions. The prediction is, that marriage will deteriorate too (already happening) and male-female relations will be based on nothing else, but sexuality. Most women will eventually become prostitutes, selling themselves to the highest bidder, which you already see happening with instagram and onlyfans. This of course will also mean, that there will be no suitable women left for marriage, as no decent man will want to marry a prostitute, so no marriage, just basically sex for money, but only for rich men, since poor men won't have the means to pay for it.
This is just one aspect of the problem, but it's really multifaceted.
If you want a deep dive into the problems in male-female relations in modern society, this article is still the best out there in my view, despite being over a decade old:
I knew about St Theresa of Avila, yes, her inner system is very similar to yoga. Same with the Cabbalistic tree of life, which has 7 levels if you look at it.
I don't know where the idea comes from, that God would somehow directly intervene in mortal affairs, it isn't even supported in scripture. He only ever did so during apocalyptic, world-changing events. It's up to humanity to create a just society, that's not God's concern.
Chris, I am going to call you out on some of the claims you make when it comes to the Judeo Christian God. You are relying heavily on the internet version, outdated scholarship, critical scholarship, etc. I am not going to go into a deep dive, I honestly don't have the bandwidth to get into an extended discussion due to a few looming grant proposal deadlines, but a lot of newer scholarship will challenge some of your assumptions. Monotheism is a bad term, but the ancient Hebrews did believe in different gods (Elohim), plural. They just didn't think that they were anything like Yahweh, the creator. The correct term would be monolatry or henotheism. It is funny, how some critical scholars come up with all this hogwash about ancient Judaism, and also by extension Christianity, and clearly haven't actually read the text. Both, the Old and New Testament clearly talk about other gods (=divine beings), which has nothing to do with the abilities we ascribe to God the Father (=unique, creator, etc). The so-called development as Yahweh from El is also not very well argued. I highly recommend reading "Unseen Realm" from Dr. Michael Heiser, read or listen to the Whole Counsel of God blog/podcast by Father Stephen de Young. Both of these have PhDs in their respective fields of ancient near east/biblical studies and make very good counter arguments that are backed up by very respected scholarship. Also read "Lord of Spirits" by Father Andrew Damick, and listen to the associated podcast from episode 1. You will be amazed by the richness of discussion, and enchantment that comes from it. I have now read several of your posts, and I find these broad misconceptions you have very frustrating. This is though not meant as an attack, just as a friendly, please read some other sources type of post.
Ok, thanks. Admittedly, I am no expert on Christianity, I understand my limitations in this field, but sometimes the topic is unavoidable, when discussing religious or spiritual matters. I'm much more comfortable in discussing Hinduism, but most of my readers probably wouldn't be interested. Still, I am going to post further on the divine feminine and its Hindu aspects, as that greatly interests me.
My college boyfriend went to Columbia (I was at Rutgers) and took a course on Buddhism with Uma Thurman's dad-- Prof. Thurman who was one of the first westerners to either become a Buddhist monk or become very close to being one. He had a debate about religion with Richard Dawkins at Columbia and we went to see it. At the time I wasn't religious but was searching and I remember thinking Prof. Thurman made generally good points about the benefits of religion and that Dawkins was relying on cliches and the arguments of a sullen teenager who thinks he's smarter than his parents. What was amazing to me was how much this upper westside crowd booed Thurman--a Buddhist, and not even a Tibetan and theistic Buddhist--because he defended religion on the whole. They cheered like crazy for Dawkins and his pouty, arrogant arguments. I came away realizing that atheists (generally) were angry or bitter or both. And that what classified their whole scene was one big sneer.
Atheists are basically trolls, at least online. It's really quite comical to witness how much delight they take in supposedly "owning" theists. As you say, really childish overall. My biggest problem is not a lack of belief in God, that I can see as a personal choice, obviously if you don't believe, you don't, nobody can force you to. My issue is with the wilful ignorance of materialists, they simply ignore so much of what is out there. Also, eyewitness accounts are evidence, you can't just dismiss them out of hand, because they don't fit your philosophical world view. If many people say they saw the same thing, it is considered evidence in a court of law.
You might find this of interest:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/04/one-god-further-objection.html
I'd actually like to see your take on the whole 'incel' issue. I'm convinced that it has to do with a combination of the hypersexuality of modern life and the decrease in spirituality.
Thanks, interesting take, certainly far more serious intellectually, than anything I have come across so far.
I did consider writing about incelism, but it's such a minefield and would probably alienate at least half of my readers. It is a problem with no obvious solution and is likely to get much worse from here on. From a biological perspective, we are regressing to the animal kingdom norm of a very small number of alpha males (and even that term is disputed and incendiary, hence the problem of writing about this issue) monopolising the vast majority of women, who share access to the men they actually like and ignore the ones they don't. Absent some sort of social structure to enforce monogamy (for instance, through religion, or laws), humans apparently regress and default to all sorts of other "-gamies" (especially poly and hyper) and this leads to everyone being lonely and unhappy with a collapsing birth rate and eventually societal collapse.
Thought you'd like it. I recommend Feser's The Last Superstition where he's quite devastating in his attacks on the new atheist movement.
The reason I thought it might be relevant for you to write about incels is that the spiritual angle seems to be ignored in popular discussions of them. From what I've seen of these guys, they're extremely secular in their outlook and don't seem to have any kind of transcendent spirituality. I recall a pickup artist guy once who said crudely that the purpose of our lives was to 'eat and fuck' and we work jobs and make money so we can 'eat and fuck'. I do think a lot of incels have something like this mindset.
Obviously incel stands for 'involuntarily celibate', and if you pointed out the existence of voluntary celibates such as Catholic (and Buddhist) priests monks and nuns, I suspect they'd be flabbergasted that anyone would deliberately choose this, which I'd say is a sign of the hypersexualization of our time.
I'd probably quote the Bhagavad Gita to illustrate the problems with this approach, but whatever I would quote from there would be seen as incredibly sexist by today's standards. That is why, in my mind, the problem is unsolvable, or at least the steps that society would need to take to solve them, are unthinkable today, therefore it serves little purpose to talk about it.
Hindu scripture predicted our current age, which they call the Kali Yuga, with pretty amazing accuracy. It is even more amazing that they foresaw our current age thousands of years ago. Specifically, the scriptures talk about the deterioration, corruption and eventual disappearance of religion, as a consequence of which morality will also disappear, especially in terms of sexual inhibitions. The prediction is, that marriage will deteriorate too (already happening) and male-female relations will be based on nothing else, but sexuality. Most women will eventually become prostitutes, selling themselves to the highest bidder, which you already see happening with instagram and onlyfans. This of course will also mean, that there will be no suitable women left for marriage, as no decent man will want to marry a prostitute, so no marriage, just basically sex for money, but only for rich men, since poor men won't have the means to pay for it.
This is just one aspect of the problem, but it's really multifaceted.
If you want a deep dive into the problems in male-female relations in modern society, this article is still the best out there in my view, despite being over a decade old:
https://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html
I knew about St Theresa of Avila, yes, her inner system is very similar to yoga. Same with the Cabbalistic tree of life, which has 7 levels if you look at it.
I don't know where the idea comes from, that God would somehow directly intervene in mortal affairs, it isn't even supported in scripture. He only ever did so during apocalyptic, world-changing events. It's up to humanity to create a just society, that's not God's concern.